What is the fastest way to understand how incredibly beautiful our amazing planet is? There is an easy way: Just visit the most spectacular national parks in the world.
A national park is a special natural area protected as a national park by a country’s government. The purpose is to preserve nature as a general natural attraction or to increase knowledge of nature or interest in nature. National parks can also be established to protect cultural landscapes.
So which are the world’s best national parks?
In any case, the ones we list here are fantastic!
Joshua Tree National Park is located in southeastern California and is named after the yucca trees (Joshua trees) that grow in the Mojave Desert.
Here there are plenty of hiking trails that offer fantastic views and a rocky terrain that attracts lots of climbers.
The national park has therefore become a well-visited destination for adventure seekers of various kinds.
If you prefer looking at the stars, you won’t be disappointed either. The night sky is just as fascinating as the nature.
The endless and rolling plains of Serengeti National Park are famous for one of the most fascinating natural phenomena in the world – the annual movement of over 1.5 million animals as wildebeest, gazelle and zebra among others search for waterholes.
In fact, this is the only place in Africa where such large movements take place.
At the Picos de Europa mountain range in northern Spain is this beautiful park.
Here are some of Spain’s best hiking trails and the park offers visitors fantastic views of the mountains.
During the summer, the park is a popular destination for hikers.
This vast national park covers an area of nearly 8,992 square kilometers in northwestern Wyoming.
There is fascinating wildlife here in the form of bison, wolves and grizzly bears.
Along the hiking trails in this national park, you are treated to fantastic views of the vast pampas, naturally distorted and gigantic cliffs, glaciers and rippling rapids.
The scenery here changes often so prepare for surprises.
The incredibly clear water in Jordan Pond is not because the lake is shallow, it is 46 meters at its deepest point.
Nevertheless, a visibility down to a depth of 19 meters has been measured, which is a record in the state of Maine. Jordan Pond is just one of the hundreds of lakes and ponds found in Acadia National Park in the Down East region of Maine.
Acadia is not only the state’s only national park, it is also the oldest park in the United States east of the Mississippi River.
Long before Glacier National Park was established in northwestern Montana in 1910, the Blackfoot people called the area the “Backbone of the World.”
The region known as Two Medicine – home to Two Medicine Lake and the mountains that surround it – is sacred ground to the tribe.
Two Medicine Lake is just one of over 700 lakes in the park.
On the shores of the lake is a National Historic Landmark: Two Medicine Store.
Denali, formerly known as Mount McKinley, is over 6,000 meters above sea level, making it North America’s highest mountain.
It is the national park’s main attraction and the reserve spans 24,000 square kilometers of wilderness.
In our photo below, we see one of the park’s inhabitants, the North American brown bear. The bear is better known under a more frightening name – grizzly.
Grizzly bears are omnivores, eating everything from grass and fish to flying squirrels as well as the rowanberries and blueberries that cover the hillsides. Regardless of what they eat, they must pack on nearly 200 kilos to prepare for the harsh winter in the national park.
This park is famous for its huge sandstone columns that rise from the river valley towards the sky.
These gigantic monoliths served as inspiration for the floating mountains in the movie “Avatar”.
Among the scenic areas, Tianzi Mountain, Avatar Hallelujah Mountain (after the movie) and Jinbian Falls are not to be missed.
In this national park which extends over an area of 39,206 hectares, you will find elephants, wildebeests, zebras, lions, cheetahs and many other species of animals and birds.
Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain and also the world’s highest free-standing mountain, is also located in this national park.
This park is located at the foot of the Maluti Mountains.
It gets its name from the golden shadows cast when the sun shines on the sandstone cliffs.
There are many animals here, such as white-tailed wildebeest, eland, bläsbok, oribi and springbok. Many bird species, including the rare lamb’s vulture and the endangered hermit ibis, also have the park as their home.
Best explored from a canoe or kayak, this national park features a maze of rivers.
Here there is a great biodiversity, peaceful beaches, beautiful canals, breathtaking lagoons and wetlands.
It is also known for the nesting of different species of sea turtles on the beaches.
The Grand Tetons are the youngest mountains in the Rocky Mountains.
They are over 2,100 meters high and rise almost vertically from the Jackson Hole Valley in Wyoming.
The peaks were named after the French-speaking fur hunters who traveled through the area in the early 1800s.
The popular waterfalls in Augrabies Falls National Park occur where the Oranje River plunges down a granite plateau.
The largest fall has a fall height of 56 meters.
At the river, the falls stretch over several kilometers and include 19 different waterfalls.
Manuel Antonio National Park is Costa Rica’s smallest national park with its 6.83 square kilometers.
But here there are 109 different species of mammals and 184 species of birds.
Among them can be mentioned the brown-throated three-toed sloth, Hoffmann’s two-toed sloth, howler monkey, saimiri oerstedii (which is part of the skull monkey genus), cebus imitator (a species of the capuchin subfamily that occurs in Central America), iguanas, toucans, parakeets and hawks. There are also dolphins and sometimes whales.
Mount Fuji, a dormant volcano, is the main attraction of this park located less than two hours from Tokyo.
This beautiful mountain is 3,776 meters high and has been the favorite subject of artists for centuries.
This canyon is 446 km long and up to 29 km wide.
It took 3–6 million years of erosion by the Colorado River to create the canyon, but erosion continues to change its contours.
Canada’s first national park consists of mountainous and inhospitable terrain and covers 6,641 square kilometers along the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains.
The picture above shows Peyto Lake, a glacial lake known for its clear and turquoise water.
The most visited national park in the UK, with 16.4 million visitors a year.
It is also the largest of the 13 national parks in England and Wales.
Almost half of this UNESCO World Heritage Site is covered by glaciers.
The park covers an area of 7,269 square kilometers, making it Argentina’s largest national park.
The glacier got its name from the Swedish explorer Percy Quensel during a research trip in 1907/08.
Mount Everest is located in this national park (or Sagarmatha as the locals call the mountain) which is the highest mountain in the world.
Sagarmatha is Nepali for “sky” and “head.”
